Thursday, 27 November 2014

There may or not be a sex scandal on
Parliament Hill. Since this is Canada,
we can’t compete with the Profumo Affair or Italy’s happy days of bunga-bunga –
or was it oingo boingo?

Two Liberal Members of Parliament have each
been accused of sexual harassment by two rival New Democratic Party MPs. The
two Reds have been identified and pilloried in the traditional press and on
social media. The Orange accusers remain
anonymous and the allegations of misconduct are vague. Neither one has filed a
complaint with the Ottawa Police Service. One complainant is happily granting
our national media outlets detailed interviews provided her name is not used.
Apparently she’d provided a condom to one Liberal member.

People should not act like dicks. Perhaps
we’re all hardwired that way? Still, every dog, even the most despicable cur,
deserves their day in court or the opportunity to defend themselves before some
other quasi-official body. In these early days of the Information Age a digital
mob will tear you up as surely as an old fashioned, physical one before you can
get a word in. A Tweet can wreck your life.

Yesterday things got really surreal. Peter
Goldring, a Progressive Conservative MP from Edmonton, issued a press release to an
anxious Canadian public stating that he sports, and I quote from the Edmonton Journal, ‘body-worn video
recording equipment.’ He advised that MPs who ‘consort with others’ would be
wise to do likewise. The press release was retracted after the Prime Minister’s
Office issued a one sentence e-mail: ‘Mr. Goldring’s comments reflect his own
personal position.’

Now, our Prime Minister is an uptight and
paranoid autocrat. However if you consider the clowns in the back rows of
Stephen Harper’s Tory caucus you can almost empathize with him; his methods
control madness. And so, as bipartisan affairs on the Hill continue to unfurl
in a murky manner (see Justice Minister Peter MacKay for somehistoric background), we are left with another
burning question: In which body cavity would an honourable gentleman such as
Peter Goldring choose to secret his audio/video recording device?